Sitting Pretty - A Tanager on a Derby

Today I started to paint my Bee Here Now piece, but realized about half an hour into it that I needed to work out some of the kinks in my acrylic paint application. It has been about a month since I've really sat down and had time to work with paint. Moving and the new job have kept me somewhat in check, but now I am getting some time to work on things. Either way, I realized that I needed to work on my application and get my stroke back in its rhythm.

To do this I started to rework an older sketch that I had on board but which hadn't even received the full benefit of an under painting. The idea too, is a little bit older. I first put this sketch together in 2006 and painted the original in the same year, but was still in my phase of work where I finished everything with a hard pencil line, leaving all of my pieces a bit too shiny.

While I was working on the piece, I was thinking about that hard pencil line though, because when I used that line I didn't have to worry so much about contrast. Now that I have stopped using that line it is much harder to work a piece with contrast because my palette is so limited. So with this piece I was really trying to push my color a bit more to make up for some of the loss of contrast, and considering that I hadn't even pushed paint in about a month, I'm very pleased with the outcome.

Suddenly I have the desire to work with people again. Ever since I visited MICA with my fiance I have wanted to start working with people again. The birds are fun, and I love doing them, and in fact it almost feels like I am painting old friends, but with my people I can really work out how I feel about the character a bit better. Exaggeration is so much easier to use to prove a point. But anyhow, I digress. I hope you enjoy the painting, and I have a couple more in the works, so hopefully there will be something else up for you to look at soon.

Peace
-Mike